Mattress recycling program would bring cost, incentives

Ken Dixon

Published 7:23 pm, Saturday, May 4, 2013

Rocshay Thomas, of Bridgeport, walks through rows of mattresses waiting to be recycled at Park City Green, a newly opened nonprofit mattress recycler last June shortly after the facility in Bridgeport opened. The General Assembly is halfway toward approving a bill that would create the nation’s first “mattress stewardship program” and provide an incentive for consumers to recycle.
Photo: Autumn Driscoll

HARTFORD -- The General Assembly is halfway toward approving a bill that would create the nation's first "mattress stewardship program" and provide an incentive for consumers to recycle.

Bridgeport, which has a 10-month-old mattress-recycling operation, could benefit if the bill becomes a law, Mayor Bill Finch said Friday.

The legislation was in danger of being scuttled Thursday night during a two-hour back-and-forth between Democrats and minority Republicans in the House.

But after debate was temporarily suspended, a half-hour bipartisan conference led to an amendment providing the consumer incentive of cash for their old mattresses, 350,000 of which are discarded each year in the state.

The bill was eventually approved in the House 117-21 and next heads to the Senate.

Rep. Linda M. Gentile, D-Ansonia, co-chairwoman of the Environment Committee, said during the floor debate that a statewide council would be created under the legislation to administer the program.

The additional cost to consumers would range from $8 to $12 when they buy their mattresses, but the incentive for return is currently unspecified.

"The consumer would be made aware that the $8 to $12 fee is for recycling purposes," she said. "That is transparent."

Recyclers would break down the bulk items into their component parts of foam, metal springs, cotton and wood. "We know that recyclability creates jobs," she said, adding that the stewardship program would be similar to existing efforts to recycle paint and electronics.

Rep. John Shaban, R-Redding, ranking member of the Environment Committee, pushed for a mechanism for consumers to retrieve at least some of their fees at the point of recycling. Majority Democrats defeated Shaban's initial amendment, but after the debate was temporarily suspended, an agreement was reached to provide some kind of return for consumers.

Finch, in a Friday interview, said that at least part of the fees would go to recycling facilities such as Bridgeport's year-old $500,000 project at the former Eastern Bag and Paper warehouse on Iranistan Avenue run by the Greater Bridgeport Community Enterprises Inc./Green Team.

"This is a really another good step in the right direction. Instead of putting it on the taxpayers' back, it will make people more frugal," Finch said. "It's going to increase the amount of mattresses recycled. We have a lot of expertise in the field."

Finch is excited that the legislation seems to have momentum. "So many of these, right now, are sent to trash-burning plants and landfills," he said, noting that the new statewide recycling council will probably take a year to get off the ground.

But at the city mattress-recycling operation, the half dozen employees may eventually total 20 to 30, with the consumer fees helping pay their wages.

"There are so many other benefits, from the cost of picking up discarded mattresses to the lost economic development when a potential business is turned off by the sight of mattresses littering the streets, to the air quality when these things are burned," Finch said. "Thousands of thousands end up in our waste stream and this will allow them to get out of it."